Buenos Aires closed a long international chapter at the Monumental, where Lionel Messi’s Argentina career came to an end against Benin after more than 21 years in the national shirt. Across six World Cups and seven Copa América tournaments, the captain left with the numbers, silverware and defining nights of an era that restored the Albiceleste to the summit of the game.
Messi finished his senior Argentina career having made 208 appearances, scoring 126 goals and providing 70 assists. His four trophies with the senior side were the 2021 Copa América, the 2022 Finalissima, the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and the 2024 Copa América. Adding his success at youth and Olympic level, he won six international titles for Argentina.
From near misses to a golden cycle
- Messi’s early years with Argentina brought major tournament disappointment, including lost finals and persistent scrutiny over the absence of a senior international title.
- He had already won the 2005 Under-20 World Cup and Olympic gold at Beijing 2008, but the breakthrough with the senior team came in 2021.
- Argentina beat Brazil at the Maracanã to lift the Copa América, giving Messi his first major senior title with his country.
- The next year, Argentina defeated Italy in the Finalissima before Messi reached the central prize of his international career: the World Cup in Qatar in December 2022.
- The run continued in the United States in 2024, when Argentina overcame Colombia in the Copa América final to secure Messi’s fourth senior international trophy.
That sequence placed the Messi-led generation among Argentina’s most successful. It also changed the terms of a career that had once been measured as much by what it lacked internationally as by everything he had achieved at club level across Europe and later in North America.
Records left in the Argentina shirt
- Argentina’s all-time appearance holder: 208 matches.
- Argentina’s leading scorer: 126 goals.
- All-time leading scorer in South American World Cup qualifying: 36 goals.
- Most World Cup appearances by any player: 34 matches across six editions.
- World Cup all-time leading scorer, having moved beyond Miroslav Klose’s 16-goal mark during Qatar 2026.
- The first player to score in every knockout round of one World Cup, from the round of 16 through to the final, achieved at Qatar 2022.
For Argentina, the farewell was therefore about more than a final match in the capital. Messi departs as the captain of the side that ended the country’s long wait for major honours and then added continental, intercontinental and world titles in quick succession. The No. 10 shirt, already inseparable from Argentina’s football identity, now carries the record of a generation that turned its most celebrated player into its most decorated modern leader.
